Description
This anthropological study offers a crucial contribution to scholarly debates about the making of African modernity by considering the implementation and reception of gender reform in the West African context.
Historically, attempts at implementing gender reform in West Africa have been met with suspicion. Beyond the perception that such reforms subvert traditional structures of authority and community, many worry that these efforts are inextricably connected to Western imperialism and colonialism. Ludovic Lado's The Politics of Gender Reform in West Africa examines the politics of a legislative process entirely driven by the state and meant to narrow the gender gap in Ivorian society.
Lado discusses the legislative processes by which states have sought to reduce the gender gap between men and women, probes the potential impact of this reform on the condition of women by exploring the practice of civil marriage in Abidjan, and assesses the reception of the reform among Catholics and Muslims in Côte d'Ivoire. Throughout this readable and engaging study, Lado examines how the relationship between secular powers and religious authorities has determined the direction gender reforms have taken. Although the predominant focus in this text remains on gender reforms in Côte d'Ivoire, Lado also discusses their correlates in Niger, Senegal, and Mali. He shows that the success or failure of gender reforms in West Africa has relied on the interaction of various power relationships that structure the international, national, local, religious, and domestic arenas within which West Africans go about their lives. The book concludes with an informed reflection on the relationship among religions, the state, and gender reforms that highlights some of the issues at stake in the domestication of hegemonic modernity in Africa.
Author: Ludovic Lado
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
Published: 04/15/2023
Pages: 176
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.89lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.44d
ISBN13: 9780268205065
ISBN10: 026820506X
BISAC Categories:
- Social Science | Ethnic Studies | African Studies
- Political Science | World | African
- Social Science | Gender Studies
About the Author
Ludovic Lado holds a doctorate in social anthropology from Oxford University and is director of the Jesuit Center for Studies and Training for Development (CEFOD) in N'Djamena, Chad. He is the author of Catholic Pentecostalism and the Paradoxes of Africanization.